Old Friends

Labor Day, September 2, 2019
Home of Porter Webb

Through tumultuous world events, career shifts, and personal changes, they’ve stayed friends all these years. Today she’s helping him clean out his mother’s house. It’s what old friends do for one another when their parents pass away.

“Clay, where do you want to start?”

He’s glad she’s there. He didn’t want to do this alone. His wife of eight years had left him nearly that long ago, and he’s been on his own since. Despite his best efforts, in the end it was a marriage that turned cold and bitter.

Since then, he hadn’t considered finding another person to share his life. He figured he was past the age where he was attractive or eligible, resigning himself to a bachelor’s life.

But in the six months since his mother’s death, he’d begun to feel the rushing passage of time. With few friends and no children to care for him, the brutal truth of a life alone - dying alone - was making him re-think the isolation he’d imposed upon himself.

“Let’s do the attic first. We’ll work our way down.”

She’d been through a divorce as well, although her marriage was much shorter. Just two years. But her relationship with Mic Brumby hadn’t been right from the start, and it blew up in a divorce full of hateful words and accusations.

She never imagined that she’d be single at 52. She thought she’d have a husband, children, a home. In her heart she’d known that she wouldn’t have those things with Mic. But there was a time before - and after - her marriage when she thought she’d create that life with Harmon Rabb.

Her hopes of marrying and starting a family with the Commander - now Captain - had been unfulfilled. There was no hurtful reion,ion, simply a mutual recognition that despite the closeness they shared, their lives were not destined to merge.

“It’s such a beautiful house. You sure you’re going to sell it?”

“Mother made it clear that it was okay with her if I did. And since it’s just me … I can’t see living here alone.”

He is loath to sell the house to strangers, but he’d spoken the truth. He doesn’t want to live there alone, surrounded by memories of his childhood, his parents, and his father’s death.

Opening the door to the attic stairs, he catches her hand in his.

“Sarah, thanks for coming. It means a lot.” He emphasizes his gratitude with a squeeze of her hand.

“What’s this? The cold-hearted spy getting sentimental?”

She immediately sees the hurt in his eyes. She’d intended the remark to lighten his mood. But she knows now that the image of the heartless operative is one he no longer wants to project.

He drops her hand and starts to climb the stairs as he speaks so she won’t see the depth of the wound she’s inflicted.

“You were at my wedding. You dined in my home. You gave me advice and dragged me out to dinner when I was feeling sorry for myself after Colleen left. For God’s sake, you were at my mother’s funeral! I would’ve have thought you knew me better than that.”

He’s embarrassed at how easily his feelings were hurt. But he knows that the death of his mother has put things into perspective. It’s spurred a re-evaluation of his life; made clear regrets he wasn’t aware he was harboring.

“Hey, I’m sorry. You know I meant that as a joke. I didn’t mean to hit a raw nerve.” She touches his shoulder as they reach the top of the stairs.

Turning to face her, eyes to the floor at first, he admits his sensitivity. “I know. I’m sorry.”

Reaching to touch her hand, still lightly resting on his shoulder, he knows she understands. And they stand silently together in the quiet of the moment.

Before settling on a task, they wander the floor of the dusty attic. He brushes his fingers along the bottom hem of the American flag that’s hung on the wall for well over fifty years. She looks into the faces of the people in the framed photos that hang at various angles on the exposed beams.

“Let’s start here.” She chooses a cardboard box and opens it to find books and magazines.

“The American classics. Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn … but what’s this?”

Holding up a now ancient Playboy magazine, she flips to the centerfold before he can grab it from her.

“Looks well loved,” she teases.

“Okay, hand it over.”

“No way. I love the idea of an adolescent Clay Webb alon his his bed at night feeling the stirrings of manhood…” She’s being merciless now, trying to draw him out of his dark mood.

Truthfully, she does love the idea. She’s never considered him in such a sexual context before. But imagining him in the first explorations of his sexuality, she’s fascinated at the contrast to the worldly-wise man she’s ing ing with now.

“Admiral’s privilege.”

“What? You’re mumbling Clay.” She continues her teasing tone.

He laughs at his own inside joke, one that’s inextricably tied to her. Their original mission together, when he’d first met Rabb and Roberts, he knew what they thought of him. Stick-up-his-ass agent. And Roberts had gotten the better of him because of it.

Tricking him into waving his hand in front of his eyes while staring at the sun, Roberts had made a foolhim.him. But it was his own words that made him the bigger laughing stock. ‘All I’m doing is going blind.’

After that, even as their grudging friendship grew, Roberts hadn’t let him forget the masturbatory implications of his comment and gestures.

He’s now forced to explain the joke, and she laughs at the irony.

“You do realize, when Bud’s up for Admiral in a few years, it’ll be *really* funny.” She affectionately rests her head on his shoulder as her laughs subside into giggles.

“I would’ve loved to have seen Harm’s ass in a sling for encouraging Roberts that way. But I know when I’m beat.”

Later, preparing sandwiches and drinks in his mother’s kitchen his contemplative mood returns. And once back in the attic, he sighs and pulls his mother’s old steamer trunk into the center of the room, carefully tilting the lid open.

He kneels before it, afraid to disturb the memories that lie inside. She looks down at him and considers the pensive man before her.

He’s a far cry from the relatively young and inexperienced, though arrogant, spy she first met. She’d seen him grow tremendously, both professionally and personally over the last twenty or so years.

She can see the wear of time in his face, but he carries it well. There’s a graying at the temples of his shortly cropped hthatthat completes the look of a mature man. Though she hates the term, it’s the best she can come up with - he looks distinguished.

As she sits down next to him, looking more directly at his face, she thinks better of her word choice, settles on “experienced,” and thinks it suits him well.

He finally begins to pull items from the trunk, revealing quilts hand-sewn by great-grandmothers, photo albums that will need to be gone through and properly labeled, tiny clothes and a baby bonnet long since outgrown by their owners.

She pulls out a seashell and her eye catches faded writing on the smooth white undersurface. She squints trying to make out the words.

Taking the shell from her he explains, “My father sent it to my mother in 1958 when he was in Hawaii. He wrote his marriage proposal on the inside … ‘My dear Porter, make me the happiest of men. Marry me. All my love, Nev.’”

“They were really happy together, weren’t they?”

Her voice reflects some of her regret at not finding a mate to share her life with. He simply nods, but can’t help feeling the emptiness in his heart and he wonders if she feels anything similar.

He thinks she must when she puts her arm around him in a comforting gesture. Turning to face her, he looks in her eyes and tries to convey his gratitude for her friendship and the warmth he feels towards her.

In his gaze she senses his affection, and his loneliness. She wonders if after all this time, they could fill the gaps in each other’s lives.

Maybe it just took years of life and life’s experiences to make them who they are today. Two people with a relationship built on respect and friendship, finally ready for love.

Bringing her other hand up, she places the open palm over his heart. She wants him to be certain that she knows he’s not the Tin Man he pretends to be.

He covers her hand with his and leans forward to meet her lips in a kiss. They cling together in the middle of the attic floor, hands and lips conveying an affection long felt and a desire neworn.orn.

Her lips part and their tongues meet, exploring this new facet of their relationship. He threads his fingers through her hair and she reaches out to fully embrace him. They rise to their knees in anxious yearning, bodies coming alive. She feels his erection pressing into her as she leans into him, and it feels so good to be desired by him.

“Come to bed with me,” he breathes in her ear.

“Yes,” she agrees, feeling the warm moisture building at her sex.

They travel the short distance down the stairs and into the first guest room. Once there, they slow their pace. He revels in her beauty and thinks she’s more stunning now than ever since he’s know her.

With the patience of experienced lovers, they take the time to find each other’s pace and preferences. He lovingly kisses and suckles each nipple as she runs her hands through his hair. And she delights in his reaction to her own touches on his body.

Finally naked under the covers together, she tortures the length of his body, alternating soft kisses and teasing bites. She lavishes attention on his erection and takes him into her mouth. He moans her name as he resists the urge to press her head harder against him.

When she climbs back up to kiss him again, their urgency resumes. Turning them over, he balances above her, his cock pressing at her sex. When he finally enters her, neither shies from the expression of love in the eyes of the other.

He slips a hand between them to increase her pleasure. Finding the right rhythm with his fingers, he matches his hips to it. She gasps his name and he leans forward to capture her lips as she comes, following soon after with his own climax.

In a companionable afterglow, they finish sorting through the rest of the attic and call it a day. Muscles will be tired tomorrow, both from the heavy lifting and the exertion of their lovemaking.

They make plans to continue the chore in two weeks after he returns from a business trip. He begins to consider taking the house off the market, daring now to hope that he will have someone to make a home with there.

As the days pass by, she feels his abe eve even though they’ve gone months without contact in the past. She thinks perhaps they are now in each other’s lives in such a way that they’ll no longer endure such separation with ease.

A week later, she retrieves her mail to find an oddly shaped package with no return address. Packed in crumpled newspaper is a seashell. She flashes on the shell that belonged to Clay’s parents, and puzzles over what this one could mean.

Examining the seashell, she turns it over in her hands until she sees black lettering against the pale inner surface.

“My dear Sarah, make me the happiest of men. Marry me. All my love, Clay.”

END